All This Time, I've Been Waiting For You
by CheerfulB
Summary: Five Times Gilbert Blythe says Carrots I'm not 100 % happy with a few sections of this, but here it is. :) I had a lot of fun writing it and mixing book events with show events.


Gilbert Blythe is 15 when he meets the red haired girl in the woods. She's terrified, Billy looming over her with a look Gilbert hasn't seen before and doesn't like at all. He's pleased to see he that he's taller than Billy when he rounds on him, drawing his attention away from the girl. A bit slimmer by comparison, but if he has to fight him (and oh how he wanted to in that moment) he's sure he could win.

When he finally looks her square in the face, he takes a surprised step back, his school boots crunching the autumn leaves. Her eyes are so round and so blue. And yes, they're full of fear, but something else beyond that...a sense of resignation, but some stirring of fight within. He blames that for the feeling of protectiveness that rushes through him. She's fought her battles alone for a long time, he can tell.

 _(He doesn't know it, but this is a defining moment in his life, the moment when he decides to resolutely be on this girl's side, because someone ought to be. He also has no way of knowing that he'll be there for the rest of his life.)_

He just wants her to look at him again, later at the desk. He wants to see if her eyes are really different from anyone else's in the world, or if it was just a trick of the light. He pulls her hair and says "Carrots" and honestly he regrets it even before the slate cracks across his cheek. He's never felt worse in his life than he does looking at her eyes fill up with tears and hurt when she stands staring at the blackboard, Mr Philips sneering and saying those things about her. He attempts to make it right, but the teacher won't listen and Gilbert can tell she doesn't even register that he tried to come to her defense.

When she flees the school house, he tells himself his stomach aches because he ate too much that morning.

Gilbert is almost 19 the next time he calls her Carrots. They're friends by then, walking home after a picnic by the lake with their other school chums. They all talk and laugh, waving big goodbyes as one or another leaves the group to go home . Diana is the last to go before it's just the two of them. She hugs Anne and dashes off with a "bye, Gil!"

 _(She acts like she's got something important waiting for her at home. No one will say it, but everyone knows it's really the barn she's running to, as it's one of the few places she can sneak to and meet Jerry Baynard without her parents knowing.)_

They stop to talk on the edge of the Green Gables land the way good friends can, about nothing and everything and whatever's in between. Gilbert, his shirt sticking to him in patches and sweat creeping down his neck, puts an elbow up on an old fence post to lean back and better look into Anne's face. Her cheeks are a little red from the sun but her face shines the way it always does. Her hair has darkened a touch since she had to have it all cut off after The Disastrous Dye Incident, and most of it is swinging free around her shoulders. His ears buzz faintly as he listens to her, and it should alarm him but it doesn't. All he knows is that he's so in love with Anne Shirley that he can barely breathe. He feels like he's going to go crazy if he doesn't say something, or touch her, or...

He reaches out hesitantly to rest his hand on her shoulder, or touch the dimple in her cheek like he's wanted, or SOMETHING, but he ends up with his fingertips tangling in the ends of her hair that blows out like a scarlet flag in the sudden breeze. He knows his entire heart is in his eyes, and can't even try to stop it.

Anne looks stunned, her breath coming in shallow little puffs. His gaze is so level, so steady, but there are so many things swirling in his eyes that he usually keeps hidden. He feels hot and numb at the same time, and he's shaking a little as he rubs a bit of her hair between his finger and thumb. "Gil-" she whispers and he feels like he'll die if he doesn't kiss her. So he does. He just does. He leans forward and places his lips on hers, and they're sun-warm and he both feels and hears a little "mmm" of surprise from her. Her hands reach out and he thinks she'll push him away, but instead she curls them into his shirt and is kissing him back.

It issn't until he traces the tip of his tongue along her bottom lip ( _he has to, just ONCE, and she tastes so good)_ that she finally pulls back. They're both flushed and panting and he doesn't know whether to say "I'm sorry" or "I love you."

In the end, though, as he looks and sees his fingers still playing with the end of her hair, what he says is a breathless, teasing "Carrots?" She blushes, but when she glances up through her eyelashes, she's smiling.

Gilbert Blythe is 22 when he almost dies. He doesn't remember much about it, later on, it's all lost in a haze. In his memory it's almost pleasant, a dreamy fever-fog that seemed to last forever yet take place in the blink of an eye. In reality, it wasn't pleasant at all. He shook and shivered with the fever, while the doctor and Mary and Bash did their best to care for him. He felt so cold. In his lucid moments he begged for blankets and Mary bit back tears while she told him no, he was burning up and couldn't have them. He shivered and yelled out from the stomach pain while the sweat poured from him and his eyes saw things no one else could.

He dreams of strange things, snakes slithering along mossy forests, the jack in the box he had as a child, the mother he never knew. He sees his father. He's missed him so much, and it feels good to sit down and talk. It feels good to sit down and tell him that he's so tired, and sick, and honestly hasn't been truly well since the day Anne Shirley said she wouldn't marry him.

 _It was a shock, truly. There hadn't been more kisses like the one he'd given her almost two years previously, but he knew that she knew he loved her. All he was doing was finally saying it. He was giving voice to what they were to each other. But she'd cried and said no, said that it wouldn't work, that he shouldn't choose her when he could have anyone, that she would make him unhappy._

 _When she says that, he knows she loves him. She isn't doing this because she doesn't want him, she's doing it because she's worried he'll stop wanting her. He can't find the words to tell her that she's wrong, that she is the truest North he'll ever know. He doesn't know how to say that there isn't a compass to be found that wouldn't point him straight to her. All that comes out is "Anne...please, Anne. Please. I...you must know that I love you..." but she won't._

For the next year life itself seems like a kind of illness, so his descent into typhoid fever goes almost unnoticed, as do the first few days of his recovery. It isn't fast or dramatic. It's just that one day he's near death and the next he's a little further away from it, a little cooler, a little less restless. He isn't well when she comes two days later, but neither is he so ill he thinks she's one of his many fever visions. He may never be hers, but Anne Shirley will always be the most real thing he knows.

He can tell instantly she's been crying, hard, for days. She collapses beside his bed and looks so haunted and sad that he feels like he could cry himself. "Gil..." she forces out. "I...I thought...I thought I'd not see you again, I thought you'd go and I wouldn't be able to tell you..." she pauses. Gilbert can't smile much but in his brain he's grinning like a fool. His Anne, lost for words?

"I realize I...maybe you don't, don't, don't mean what you said before now but I want you to know how bleak and desolate the years seemed when I thought I would be without you" she says in a headlong rush. "and you, you should know that, that I..." she's looking at him in such abject misery (ah, but there's a faint hope there yet, isn't there) that he takes pity on her and reaches out to brush her hair away from her tear dampened face. His hand is so heavy, he's so tired, but he manages it as well as the first words he's spoken in days.

"I love you too, Carrots."

Gilbert is 25 on his wedding night, tired but happy after their beautiful day. Anne's voice is running like a brook (talking about the flowers, the cake, the tears that slid down Marilla's face, beautiful small Anne Cordelia Baynard in her miniature silk dress) as they walk slowly into the bedroom of their new little home.

GIlbert's jacket is gone. He hears Anne's breath hitch as he eases his suspenders down his arms. She keeps talking, the way she hasn't since their teens, prattling on nervously. He wants her to pull the tail of his starched white shirt out of his trousers, but he does it himself this time. He waits then, for a sign from her. She starts and stops a few times before turning her back to him and whispering "unbutton me, Gil?"

 _(It all seems to happen at once after that. His fingers, trembling slightly and undoing button after tiny button. Kissing. Peeling her dress down and letting it fall, finally allowed to press his mouth anywhere he wants to. Walking backwards toward the bed with her hands in his. A little later, thinking about how he's never been this vulnerable with another person, how he never could be. He wants to rush, wants to hurry, but at the same time he just wants to keep touching Anne, keep kissing Anne, and never stop. He knows a little bit of what he's doing and so does she, and somehow a little bit and a little bit add up to everything. Even later still, both of them gasping and close and straining against each other. Her teeth find his shoulder and bite gently, mindlessly. He groans out her name and suddenly everything is taking flight inside them, like a flock of vivid birds startled into soaring away from their treetop.)_

The next morning it's so strange to wake up to each other on the next pillow, and they blush a little, which seems silly. Anne clears her throat. "Dr. Blythe," she says, with a businesslike nod. Gilbert grins, his brown eyes twinkling. "Mrs Cuthbert-Shirley-Blythe."

"They're silent for a minute before Gilbert rubs his hand over the back of his neck self consciously. "Are you...are you all right, Anne? Are you, you're not...hurt, or..." He doesn't know why he feels more nervous now than he had the previous night, but he does. If he's honest with himself he hasn't felt this ill at ease around her since the time he came back to Avonlea, after working on the ship when they were just children.

"I don't know if I can put into words how I feel just now, Gilbert," she says. "But I'm very far from being hurt. I feel...I feel..." Her eyes are shy on his. Shy, and big and blue as the ocean he sailed on, back to her all those years ago.

"Yes..." he says as he brings his face closer and closer to hers, thinking only that they can be together whenever they want, forever, and who are they to be this lucky? He cradles her face in his hands, inching them deeper and deeper into that hair he loves so much, and whispers, "So do I, Carrots. So do I," before he kisses his wife.

Gilbert is 28 when he holds his first son. He's so afraid, after the last time, after their poor tiny daughter passed the same day she was born. He had wanted to scream, he remembers, from his own pain and from the knowledge that Anne had been hurt so much, in some deep place he would not be able to heal.

( _Their beautiful Joy. She was so pale and sweet and felt hollow boned, like a little bird. He thought she looked like a fairy child. Maybe she was. Whatever else she was made for, it wasn't here. Fairyland needed her again, he supposed, and sometimes when it's hard to think of her without pain he imagines her flying on little wings, sleeping curled in a rosebud.)_

But this is different. He knows that as soon as he put his hands on his son, to ease him from his mother's body. He is so solid, so warm, yelling loudly. He is of the earth, this baby. This one will live a long, long time.

 _(Many years later, his strong baby boy will be a young man like so many others, crossing the sea to fight in a war so big and terrifying that the whole world is in agony. They won't know where he is for a time, and it will be all Gilbert can do to keep the pieces of his mind together and care for Anne as well, Anne who would search the earth for her child, wailing and crazed with terror, if she could. He will hold her in his arms and though he won't remember this exact moment, he will be able to tell her "no, he is coming back, he is coming back to us, his years are far from over" and know it is the truth.)_

But that is a long time away. For now he sits in the chair beside their bed, where Anne sleeps her warrior's sleep, exhausted from bringing the baby forth. She is pale, her hair fanned out and tangled on her pillow. She looks like she is floating underwater. She looks beautiful.

The newborn is snuffling about, alert, in his basket. Gilbert takes him out and places him carefully on his own legs, in an effort to let Anne rest just a few moments more. "Hello, James Matthew Blythe," he says, softly, into the little face. "Your mother thinks you're a Jem. What do you think?" The baby stares back at him solemnly, a little bundle in a white knitted blanket. _Oh, little boy_ , Gilbert thinks. _My little boy. Mine, and Anne's._

Gilbert Blythe's heart has not been entirely his own since he was 15 and met a girl in the woods. He recognizes that same feeling now, staring into the eyes of this tiny person _. There you are. I know you. I will take care of you forever. I've been waiting, I've been missing you._

"I think she's right," he whispers. He rocks the baby gently, a bit hesitantly. _(That hesitation will go completely over the next few years, as the five remaining Blythe children are born...but for now, he is a little frightened of accidentally hurting this tiny fragile person.)_

"I think you're a Jem. Not a Jamie, like we talked about before we saw you." He pauses, looking at his son (his SON, the squeeze around his heart those words bring! ). His eyes are blue, almost navy. Gilbert thinks those will change, maybe warm into a brown like his own. He hopes the baby's hair stays the same, though. He only has a very little fuzzy bit, but what he does have glows an orangey- red in the lamplight.

"Jem it is, then. Jem Blythe. But do you know...sometimes, I think I'll call you Carrots."


End file.
